Many arrangements are known in the prior art for cleaning the exhaust of internal combustion engines so that harmful materials produced during combustion are not emitted into the atmosphere in harmful quantities. One widely employed arrangement for accomplishing this end result is the catalytic converter. Not only are such arrangements relatively expensive and complex, they often require hydrocarbon liquid fuels of a precise nature or character to operate efficiently or even at all. Of course, many internal combustion engine designs require liquid hydrocarbon fuels of a specified type to function at all, even in the absence of associated specialized emission control equipment.
A search directed to the present invention located the following U.S. patents: U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,365, issued Nov. 10, 1992, U.S. Pat. No. 4,350,133, issued Sep. 21, 1982, U.S. Pat. No. 5,002,481, issued Mar. 26, 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 4,204,401, issued May 27, 1980, U.S. Pat. No. 4,802,445, issued Feb. 7, 1989, U.S. Pat. No. 4,059,076, issued Nov. 22, 1977, U.S. Pat. No. 4,735,186, issued Apr. 5, 1988, U.S. Pat. No. 3,736,745, issued Jun. 5, 1973, U.S. Pat. No. 4,567,857, issued Feb. 4, 1986, U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,576, issued Nov. 9, 1971, U.S. Pat. No. 3,896,774, issued Jul. 29, 1975, U.S. Pat. No. 3,963,000, issued Jun. 15, 1976, U.S. Pat. No. 4,008,692, issued Feb. 22, 1977, U.S. Pat. No. 4,041,910, issued Aug. 16, 1977, U.S. Pat. No. 4,089,314, issued May 16, 1978, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,108,114 , issued Aug. 22, 1978.
Some of the aforesaid patents generally teach the concept of decomposing or reforming certain types of liquid hydrocarbon fuels to produce hydrogen gas. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,350,133 discloses an alcohol fuel burner and decomposer in which one stream of fuel is preheated by passing it through an electrically heated conduit to vaporize the fuel. The fuel vapor is mixed with air and the air-fuel mixture is ignited and combusted. The combustion gases are passed in heat exchange relationship with a conduit carrying a stream of fuel to decompose the fuel, forming a fuel stream containing hydrogen gas for starting internal combustion engines.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,567,857 discloses an arrangement wherein methanol is decomposed. A flow through a catalytic reactor selectively catalytically decomposes the methanol into a soot-free, hydrogen-rich product gas. The engine exhaust at temperatures of 200 degrees to 650 degrees centigrade provides the heat for vaporizing and decomposing the methanol. The reactor is combined with either a spark ignited or compression ignited internal combustion engine or a gas turbine to provide a combustion engine system. The system may be fueled entirely by the hydrogen-rich gas produced in the methanol decomposition reactor or the system may be operated on mixed fuels for transient power gain and for cold start of the engine system. The reactor includes a decomposition zone formed by a plurality of elongated cylinders which contain a body of vapor-permeable methanol decomposition catalyst, preferably a shift catalyst such as copper-zinc. A vaporizer is provided for vaporizing liquid methanol prior to introduction into the elongated cylinders. Exhaust gas from the internal combustion engine is passed in contact with the elongated cylinders to supply the heat needed for methanol decomposition. The partially cooled exhaust gases are then passed to the vaporizer where residual heat in the exhaust is utilized in vaporization of liquid methanol.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,735,186 discloses a method of operating an internal combustion engine, including recycling at least a portion of the exhaust gases produced by the engine, reacting the recycled gas with a hydrocarbon fuel to produce a reformed fuel by cracking molecules of the hydrocarbon fuel. During an induction stroke an air supply is delivered to the cylinder combustion chamber separately from a supply of the reformed fuel.
My U.S. Pat. No. 5,379,728, issued Jan. 10, 1995, discloses an apparatus and a method for supplying fuel to an internal combustion engine. The heated exhaust gases from the internal combustion engine are brought into direct and indirect contact with a liquid hydrocarbon fuel to vaporize the liquid hydrocarbon fuel and form a mixture of vaporized liquid hydrocarbon fuel and heated exhaust gases. The mixture is passed through a passageway and further heated by non-contacting exhaust gases from the internal combustion engine to reform the mixture to hydrogen gas within the passageway for combustion in the internal combustion engine.